Critical Studies lectures reviewed VISUAL MUSIC 17th Nov 2011

I found this topic interesting for many reasons.

 It took us right back in history but then picked up from Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century argued that white light could be divided almost by a “musical” division. He then went on to make made great progress and helped to develop optics.

    Sir Isaac Newton with a prism.

                                                            Sir Isaac Newton's colour wheel

The lecture mentioned  that he added two more colours to the colour wheel which was Indigo and orange and next we were briefly introduced to the French Monk Castel of  the year 1725 and the ocular harpsichord idea was proposed. It wasn't until 1742 clavecin oculaire also known as a light organ. This was made to light up  60 different colours according to what sound was being made.

Alexander Rimington and his Colour Organ, 1893.

Alexander's colour organ  attracted a lot of attention, It has been under great debate if  his device did actually form the basis of the moving lights that accompanied the New York Premiere of his symphony in 1915 to THE POEM OF FIRE.

As we followed the journey through time on the subject it was mentioned that the Victorians were thought to have made the connection to colour and sound which can  be caused by vibration. By the 1920s Thomas Wilfred had used  the term Lumia and had invented and patented several versions of the Clavilux, which played with the idea of colour and emotion.
We then moved onto music and the film names mentioned were that of Lapis, Len Lyle and Barbel Neubauer to name a few
Yantra - James Whitney 1957 video sound to music can be seen on the link provided

  . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvWwlZSXaR0&feature=related

Norman McLaren quoted this about his work:

             " animation  -IS NOT THE SORT OF DRAWINGS THAT MOVE BUT THE ART OF 

           MOVEMENTS THAT ARE DRAWN"

 "what happens between each frame is more important than what happens on each frame"

"the art of manipulating the invisible bits between frames"

The films shown:

 I found three better than the others which were HOPPITY POP  by Norman McLaren click on link to view http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scjlUoZs8MM  and  NEIGHBOURS which was a quirky anti war film. It was made in stop motion and portrayed fighting in a light entertaining way. It was one of those films that you may have to see yourself to pass and understand my judgement.
The link below is to Norman McLaren's  Stop motion film NEIGHBOURS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKI_bVYnYjI&feature=related

Image stills from the film.

The third film I liked which we ended on was PAS DE DEUX  this was a ballet, from a film  point of view it was beautifully lit and filmed in an elegant way to music. Which kind of brought us to a wider kind of up to date interpretation of vision and music. Due to music incorporated into Ballet I feel it would not be able to stand on its own without it.The music helps to portray and accentuate the graceful moves to the music.

The link below is to the Norman McLean film PAS DE DEUX.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6znw7_pas-de-deux-norman-mclaren-1967_creation

 The lecture itself, I felt, was delivered very flatly and made listening hard due to it becoming a slow painful drone. I would have understood more if  moderate layman's terms were used.The hour of the lecture soon came to an end, the film and slide shown made up for that a little.There was quite a lot of facts and history bungled into the lecture, which seemed to make it a quick over view of the topic.I didn't see the relevance to photography but more as an hour of a history lesson, of where it all originated from and it then flew off into the arts area.

At the end of the visual music lecture, like so many topics, it then opened the door to more independent  directional thinking for me. Such as how we can take for granted what we have around us.
Below are some things this lecture reminded me of.

Music festival and clubs: This was because they can also have lights shows that are triggered by music. There are many versions of this as you can imagine depending on your price range, this is how far technology has come such a long way from the ocular harpsichord.

The light box

colours triggered by music.

The connection of colour and sound reminded me of the game Simon Says.

The concept was simply that you had to recall the patterns of the red, blue, green and yellow lights as they lit in increasingly complex patterns. Popular from its launch in 1978 (at legendary nightclub Studio 54) the game has become a classic '70s toy.

The children's coloured xylophone is also connected to this topic, it also enhances a child's memory to learn by using the colours.

 Steven Spielberg used in  his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a hand-sign system for teaching music to deaf children. It was devised by Zoltán Kodály in the early part of the twentieth century. In the film it was adapted as an analogy for the way in which man might communicate with a superior alien intelligence

I feel that on a larger scale music and vision is connected to so much more and thanks to research it can, and has, helped to stimulate humans in all kinds of ways - an example being helping to treat those people with health problems.

 It also reminded me of some information that I had previously known about.

A Snoezelen room (a combination of Dutch words that mean "to doze" and "to sniff) has been said to help sufferers of Alzheimer's with:

• Improved physical health
• Improved mood
• Improvement in attention
• Improvement in memory
• Relaxation
• Decreased behaviours and Better quality of life for the user

Basically the room stimulates the senses with:

Calming images being shown on the wall with a projector in a preferably all white room, where there are coloured, moving lights,soothing music playing in the background, and relaxing smells such as lavender in the air. There are many different items you can put into the room, such as fibre optic lights, bubble tubes etc.

The Snoezelen Room was originally made for people with disabilities to be able to go into a safe environment to become calm and relax in.This type of therapy has become popular and has been given recognition within Long Term Care Facilities and Nursing Homes working with  residents suffering from Alzheimer's .
I was lucky enough to have experienced  one of these rooms, stimulating and de-stressing is exactly what I thought of it and I would even recommend them for all  staff work places.

A Snoezelen room.

Above is an example of a room which CHAS has. It's a Children's Hospice Association based in Scotland to provide help and support for children with life limiting conditions.

Meditation and colour healing can also be linked to visual music.

I understand that my examples are off track with the lecture content of Visual Art, but I'm sure you may agree that both music and colour have brought us so much more. To only comment on the lecture from just one point of view to me is a shame. Due to the fact that it has made me think of them both on a broader scale.

CONTENT     7/10

DELIVERY    2/10

INTEREST       8/10 

Please note all pictures and links have been taken off the internet. I have borrowed them only for the purpose to explain about the lecture in question.